On paper the Gameboy Zero is a great idea. A classic hand held console housing a single-board computer capable of running a wide variety of operating systems and games. But the current pre-made units on the market do however lack in a few basic areas.
The biggest problem we saw with the pre-built units was the price, commonly going for £300 on Ebay. we saw this price as either money grabbing or the result of poor planning. We know we can do better, with a starting price of £200 incl charging cable, HDMI cable, 32GB SD card + free 24hr UK shipping & lifetime support.
One issue we saw with the mainstream design was the use of the cartridges for SD cards and the lack of any video out meaning local multiplayer is impossible.
Our Gameboy Zero can have cartridges plugged in but they instead connect using a concealed micro USB port and act as axillary storage/power or a micro SD card case.
The SD card slot and mini HDMI port are now accessible from the cart slot when no cartridge is inserted.
Another issue is that mainstream units often have parts in their descriptions that read something like “don’t open” or “hard to close again”.
Again this seems like poor planning. As a result our GBZ’s have been designed to separate into two halves when opened, and connect once the shell is closed. the front half of the unit houses the motherboard, screen, speaker, controls, and the volume dial and ports. The back half houses the pi, battery & cartridge slot. So there will be no flying spaghetti monsters lying in wait. The motherboard is attached to the front half with screws, once they are out the whole unit lifts out and button colors can be swapped.
Finally there seems to be a lack of quality control in the units being sold online.
We co-develop test jigs alongside our products that allow us to test every part of the system for faults before we ship. Tutorials on how to make the test jigs yourself will be released alongside each product.
We also offer a 30 day satisfaction or your money back guarantee and a 3 year warranty with every product.
